Patrick Grady
Main Page: Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)Department Debates - View all Patrick Grady's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesOrder. Can we move on? We are very short of time.
Councillor Golds: Okay, but it is an example of the police’s utter failure to look at electoral malpractice in London.
Q
Councillor Golds: Let us be absolutely clear that the disqualification was nothing to do with the police, who completely ignored it. It was done by four brave citizens who lost a fortune on it, because they are liable for everybody’s costs, including Lutfur Rahman’s.
On the issue of potential Tower Hamletses, they are out there in other places. Commissioner Mawrey mentioned Slough and he mentioned the problem of Woking, where the returning officer himself said that he did not believe that he had declared an accurate result in all his time as a returning officer. There are issues in Bradford and in other parts of the country. Indeed, we heard from one of your colleagues, who read that extraordinary email that was circulated in the Batley and Spen by-election. That would be typical here.
Outside a polling station, in one of my elections, there were people placed to tell every single Bangladeshi voter two subjects: one, that Councillor Golds is a Jew, and the second, that Councillor Golds is gay. To prove the second point, they had an extract from the election address to ensure that it was understood that the person I have lived with for the past 23 years is male. That was done in London in 2010. Please, as Mr Shelbrooke has said, do not say it is not happening elsewhere. The Bill is essential to clean our elections.
Indeed, we have the appalling situation in Peterborough where a fraudster can sit at a polling station, can turn up at the count, can be present at the reception of postal votes and can stand there smirking for selfies. This is a man who has gone to prison for election fraud and who has been disqualified from voting, but who is taking part in elections. We can all see it. This man Tariq Mahmood tweets it repeatedly. We need the law clearing up so that we do not have what Alec Shelbrooke has said happened in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, which is repeated in Peterborough and seen in Tower Hamlets. We want clean elections so that people on the Isle of Dogs can vote with the same security as Mr O’Hara’s constituents, the good people of Argyle and Bute.
Q
Gillian Beasley: Thank you for that question. I was talking to my electoral administrators this week about those divisions, and there is undoubtedly going to be more complexity around that. It is already quite complex, if you walk into a polling station with a presiding officer, working out what all the letters mean and who can and cannot vote. I think it means that we need not only highly trained electoral administrators, but highly trained presiding officers. I think it has got a training burden. We are finding it more difficult to get presiding officers because of the complexity, and we will need some really detailed and careful training packages to make sure that the right people get to vote and we administer the register in a proper way. We do expect there to be some burdens and some additional resource needed to ensure we can administer that properly and carefully.
Gareth Cann, do you have anything to add?
Assistant Chief Constable Cann: Nothing specific. Quite a few issues were raised by Councillor Golds there, but nothing specific for me to come back on, other than that it felt to me that the police had not so much ignored that allegation as assessed and investigated it, and unfortunately it could not be substantiated, which they reported back to the interested parties. I have nothing specific to add on the last question.